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Former Tutors – Simon Fraser

Simon has previously tutored at Gormanston Drama Summer School

SIMON FRASER – Simon is the Associate and Musical Director of Absolute Theatre, with whom he has created music for a number of productions, including The Shoemaker’s Wondrous Wife by Lorca, an opera using contemporary soap opera themes entitled Opera Soap commissioned by Battersea Arts Centre, the UK premiere of Spiel Im Berg by the Austrian playwright Felix Mitterer and The Crowgate, a sung-through piece performed by young people from eight schools in Newham, East London. His career began with the Platypus Theatre Company in the West Midlands; composition credits include The Old Wife’s Tale (George Peele), The Interference by Tim Rose Price and Steve Dinsdale’s version of Leon Garfield’s story Mr. Corbett’s Ghost, which Garfield himself described as the best adaptation of any of his books.

Simon has written music for several large-scale productions, including Cry to the Hunt for Shared Experience and performed in the Poland Street car park in Soho, the National Youth Theatre’s White City Black Country, No Surrender (Remould Theatre Company Hull) and Possession, a promenade piece performed at Witley Court in Worcestershire by over eighty young people. Other theatre includes music for Electra, Spring Awakening, ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore, Twelfth Night, The Rivals, The Good Person of Szechwan and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (Theatre Royal Bath), Aladdin (Byre Theatre), Citizenship by Mark Ravenhill, Peter Pan and The Man of Mode with the Young Actors Theatre, who also this year staged Islington The Opera, written by Peter Cann and Simon Fraser. He regularly collaborates with the Portuguese company Teatro do Montemuro; credits include Alminhas, O Canto da Cepa, Anjo do Montemuro and Louco na Serra.

Other compositions include Paradise Lost, the first new oratorio to be premiered at the Three Choirs Festival since Saint-Saens in 1913; his orchestral piece At Caerlaverock was performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at Kenwood House and in 2011, he produced and composed songs for the audio version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland which featured performances by Andy Serkis, Celia Imrie, Simon Callow and Jonathan Pryce.

He is a prolific songwriter and continues to play with various bands in a variety of genres. Instruments: piano, bass guitar, slide guitar, percussion.